Syd (formerly Rachel) Zolf is the author of numerous books, including No One's Witness: A Monstrous Poetics (Duke University Press, 2021), a finalist for the 2022 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism from the Poetry Foundation. They have published six collections of poetry, including Social Poesis (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2019), Janey's Arcadia (Coach House Books, 2014), Neighbour Procedure (Coach House Books, 2010), and Human Resources (Coach House Books, 2007), as well as six chapbooks.

Their awards include a 2018 Pew Fellowship in the Arts and a 2008 Trillium Book Award for Poetry; they have been a finalist for several other prizes, including two Lambda Literary Awards. Art videos that Zolf has written and/or directed have screened at venues such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam, White Cube Bermondsey, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. They have received over 30 poetry, video, creative nonfiction, and academic research grants and fellowships from institutions including the Leeway Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Zolf holds an MFA from The New School, where they organized the first collaborative MFA in creative writing ever, and a PhD in Philosophy, Art and Social Thought from the European Graduate School. Zolf teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and has spent many years organizing writing projects with trans youth, incarcerated people, and other communities. Their literary papers are housed at York University Archives and Simon Fraser University Special Collections.